Quit Waving The Damn Flag And Get Real About Immigration

Everybody is trying to make it to the weekend and the president is still grinding away, with a speech yesterday guaranteed to open up debates from coast to coast during this most patriotic of weekends.

But if we could quit getting caught up in all the god damn flag waving for a minute, we might really be able to see more clearly why this is a problem, and why doing more of what we are doing now is not possible.

Every house in my neighborhood was built in part by illegal immigrant labor. If you live in a house in just about any metro area in the country that was built in the last twenty years, yours was too. This labor allowed you to buy a bigger house for less money - whether it was ten percent less or twenty percent less or some number somewhere in between I don't know, but it should be obvious to anyone who knows how to operate a basic calculator that paying less than market wages translated into a benefit for the builder and the homeowner.

BY the time I return, illegal immigrants with leaf blowers will have cleared my neighborhoods streets of debris.

The golf courses I passed this morning all employ their own armies of illegal immigrants to keep their fairways and their greens cut.

The restaurant where I ate a bacon biscuit had several illigal immigrants working in the back prepping food orders and washing dishes.

Squadrons of illegal immigrants descend on the houses I pass everyday to clean them, or repair their roofs, or paint them, or lay sod, or any number of tasks that keep an oasis of Republican rectitude looking crisp and clean.

As Americans - not just Republicans, or Democrats, but AMERICANS - we will lie to ourselves so much it should be listed as an official pathological disease category by the Psychological Association.

We cannot and will not pay the hundreds of billions of dollars a year to completely secure the border and aggressively deport any and all illegal immigrants.

If we did, the people who depend on this cheap labor would squawk their heads off via their lobbyists, PR people and fake political action groups.

The good thing about not being the president is not having to deal with everything. I have done no research on the illegal immigrant problem, and I am heavily inclined to follow the rule of law.

But unless we want to leave this issue in the "permanent national complaint" category, we have got to quit bullshitting ourselves about our moral purity and get real - we are in a symbiotic relationship with 15 million to 20 million people who are an integral part of our daily lives.

And since all our principles seem to evaporate whenever we can get something we want cheaper, we need to act like real capitalists and come up with a capitalist solution, rather than one cooked up in a church pulpit or a political rally.

The president is right about making these people citizens, but he can't tell Americans the real reason why this is the only answer we are willing to pay for. He can't tell Americans that we are prone to say one thing and do another, because that's not what we elect our presidents to do.

Is this is an easy answer? No. Do I like it? No. But there are a lot of things in life I don't like that I deal with because it is the best that can be done under the circumstances.

Even in Arizona, where antipathy against illegal immigrants is high, and new laws seem to hit the books daily to eradicate them, I don't see any mass firings of illegal immigrants. Any groundswell of support AT ALL from those who even as I write this are preparing pay envelopes to hand out later this afternoon to their no documents required employees, employees they are counting on to return to work next week, and the week after, and the week after that so the rest of us can continue to get the stuff we want at as cheap a price as we possibly can.

But since I'm not the president, I can tell you why most of us, when it comes to immigration, are full of shit. Until you start tearing the sheetrock out of your house that was put up by illegal immigrant hands, until you start stripping the paint off of your house that was painted on there by illegal immigrant hands, until you start stripping the shingles off your roof that were nailed in place by illegal immigrant hands, until you stop eating at restaurants that use illegal immigrant labor, or refuse to eat food tended and picked by illegal immigrant hands...

...you need to put down that damn flag and start trying to learn some Spanish.

Descended In Blood And In Spirit

America works for me. It might not be the country I want it to be, but it’s the one I've got. It’s going to have the same warts whoever gets elected this fall. Sanctimony is out of style and humility just went on sale in the part of America I live in.

I have not served in the military.

I do not own a flag.

And I’m not sure I know all the words to the Pledge of Allegiance.

There are some days, when I am upset or angry, when the things I say about this country I live in make the incendiary sound bites of Rev Jeremiah Wright sound like love notes. Me and the people who look like me are here because America was is addicted to cheap labor (see "Mexican immigrants, who you want to be deported, but ONLY after they finish building your homes, cleaning your homes, cutting your grass and washing your cars), but we've made a way out of no way, rising all the way to Most Favored Minority status after hundreds of years of oppression. If you add up all the other things like these that I have been known to complain about, you might come to the conclusion that I am unpatriotic.

You would be wrong.

I LOVE America - not the poster of Uncle Sam, or the image of the White House beamed around the world daily, but the people who live here. The government is NOT America. "We the people" - remember those words? the preamble to our one and only Constitution - "We the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect Union..." is a declarative opening that states precisely what took place at the inception of our nation. The power that those colonists gave to its governing body is the same power you give your government today.

As a country, as a people who can unite for common causes, we have done some great things for ourselves and for the world. There's nothing wrong with celebrating our accomplishments. An endless loop of patriotic sounding jingles and incessant flag waving, though, is not necessary.

Feigning naivete when we know damn well what levels of depravity and greed flourish in our American government, even as these revelations are unearthed, is unconscionable and juvenile.

We have to fight the fight now, because its not over, not by a long shot. I can't spend all my time worrying about legacies, or historical images. To get from here to there in anything, I 've got to spend as much of my energy as I possibly can on dealing with the unknown and unseeable future as it happens.

"Here in America we are descended in blood and in spirit from revolutionists and rebels -- men and women who dare to DISSENT from accepted doctrine. As their heirs, may we never confuse honest DISSENT with disloyal subversion."

Dwight D. Eisenhower


"You cannot become thorough Americans if you think of yourselves in groups. America does not consist of groups. A man who thinks of himself as belonging to a particular national group in America has not yet become an American."

Woodrow T. Wilson


"How soon we forget history... Government is not reason. Government is not eloquence. It is force. And, like fire, it is a dangerous servant and a fearful master."

George Washington

My inner curmudgeon will be on break this weekend. Whether you sit around a grill tomorrow, or gather at the beach, or celebrate urban style by taking it to the streets, remember, as you enjoy the food and the drink and the camraderie of your friends and family and enjoy this celebration, that we are all descended in blood and in spirit from those whose blood, sweat(that was our part)and tears earned us the freedoms and the liberties we cherish as Americans today.